Identity theft

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib ... 6list.html

Identity theft

February 16, 2007

ID Analytics, a San Diego risk-management company, released an analysis yesterday showing which states had the highest and lowest rates of identity fraud. The company says the new research is the first to be based on actual and attempted frauds rather than on consumer victim reports.

Highest rates

1. New York

2. California

3. Nevada

4. Arizona

5. Illinois

6. Hawaii

7. Oregon

8. Michigan

9. Washington

10. Texas

Lowest rates

1. Wyoming

2. Vermont

3. Montana

4. North Dakota

5. New Hampshire

6. Ohio

7. Maine

8. Iowa

9. West Virginia

10. South Dakota

Is it possible that there is a relationship to criminal aliens in the state?

Hey there Beckyal - you must have been reading my mind. I was wondering the EXACT SAME THING!

OK, so I did a little research + some tweaking of lists in a spreadsheet:

I think this gives some idea of the answer:

First Column: Identity Theft Rates (Ranked by high->low)
Second Column: State Name
Third Column: % Illegal in Total Pop. (2000 stats. from FAIR originally compiled by US Bureau of Census)

=================================

1. New York 2.54
2. California 6.15
3. Nevada 4.32
4. Arizona 4.93
5. Illinois 3.40
6. Hawaii 0.16
7. Oregon 2.50
8. Michigan 0.69
9. Washington 1.61
10. Texas 5.33
: :
41. South Dakota 0.32
42. West Virginia 0.13
43. Iowa 0.81
44. Maine 0.18
45. Ohio 0.35
46. New Hampshire 0.19
47. North Dakota 0.39
48. Montana 0.27
49. Vermont 0.40
50. Wyoming 0.49

Oh yeah, there's a relationship there.

For you statistics folks, anybody wanna guess of a 'r' of about 0.6 or 0.7?
I wish I had the entire dataset for all 50 states - then all data comparisons would be much more valid.